The Railway School Cars and Ontario's Isolated Peoples

Country School Journal, Vol. 2 (2014) 24 Theodore Christou explores two effective modes of extending the educational franchise to the rural peoples in Ontario, Canada, that arose from the progressivist impulse in education. He situates these innovations within a political context that promoted both educational innovation and Anglo - conformity as essential to Canadian national identity. Using the railway school car program as an exemplar, Christou explores rationales behind the rise and decline in political support for a distinctive initiative that increased educational access for isolated populations in Ontario between 1926 and 1967. The politics that led to the rise of school-on-wheels railway cars and correspondence courses are similar to the politics we have today regarding education. −Eds. The Railway School Cars and Ontario’s Isolated Peoples Theodore Christou Queen’s University Introduction In Clinton, Ontario, east of Lake Huron, one can find the School on Wheels Railway Museum. The center of the museum is a Canadian National (CN) railway car modified to serve as a classroom on wheels for the students in Ontario. An early progressivist spirit led to the establishment of railway school cars, while a later progressivist tide led to their demise in 1967. This educational innovation began as an experiment in 1926 with a single car and expanded at its peak to seven cars. The first railway car school was CN #15071, which traveled a route that encompassed 237 kilometers, or 150 miles.1 The program endured more than four decades and garnered inspections from visiting royals, including King George and Queen Elizabeth. The “fourth R of education” in Ontario was the railway cars.2 Country School Journal, Vol. 2 (2014) 25 This article situates the rise of the school railway car program in the period between WWI and WWII. The program was tied to the themes and principles of progressive education and was introduced during the same year that another program, correspondence courses, began. While the focus of this article is railway school cars, discussion of the school cars program would be incomplete without some explanation of the correspondence courses. Both served as means of extending educational opportunity to isolated communities in northern Ontario and, simultaneously, were understood to be efficient means of promoting Canadian citizenship and Anglo-conformity. The Progressive Impulse in Ontario Following World War I, successive educational authorities identified the expansion of schooling and the extension of educational opportunity as important aims for the province of Ontario. As Robert Henry Grant, minister of education, reported in 1919, “the awakened interest in the training of youth is one of the few beneficial legacies of the War, and there is little doubt that the people of Ontario will prove themselves equal to the educational problems that confront them.” 3 By 1923, Ontarians could “scarcely pick up a newspaper published in any part of the Province without reading an account of the opening of some new educational institution.” 4 In the early years following World War I and even into the unhappy years of the Depression, Ontario’s Department of Education sought to extend the educational franchise to greater and more diverse populations. Educational rhetoric throughout interwar Ontario swelled with the ethos of the “new,” or “progressive,” education, which exemplified three themes: focussing on the individual child, promoting active learning, and relating schools to society.5 It was believed that bringing schools and society into closer alignment could promote democracy at the expense of communism or socialism. Schools would emphasize the necessity of English-language fluency and fit students (as well as immigrant adults) efficiently into capitalistic industrialism. In the words of Rosa Bruno-Jofré, following the Great War “schooling was identified as the main agency to develop unity of thought, teach English to the new immigrants, educate them in Canadian ways, and generally to make Country School Journal, Vol. 2 (2014) 26 them proper members of the national polity.” 6 It was a position that gained added strength from social unrest throughout the interwar period. At the core of progressivist rhetoric was an effort to align schools with the realities of the modern age, which was understood within a social framework that was being rapidly transformed by technology, industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. 7 The Department of Education sought to modernize Ontario’s curriculum, an effort that culminated in the Revised Programme of Studies for Ontario’s Schools in 1937. Its goals were to assimilate immigrant populations into the educational franchise, consolidate schools and programs, and use schools as social centers.8 The introduction and rapid expansion of correspondence courses and railway school cars are two examples of the department’s efforts to reach the province’s rural inhabitants, who lived outside the booming urban, industrial cities located primarily on the banks of Lake Ontario in the South. Correspondence Schooling By the start of the 1930s, six provinces—Ontario, Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba—were successfully using correspondence courses to reach students in areas without organized school districts. The initial emphasis was upon elementary education.” 9 To qualify for correspondence schooling, students had to meet at least one of the following criteria: live in remote parts of a province with no access to educational institutions; be unable to travel to school for the winter months because of severe conditions and isolation; or have a physical ailment preventing travel to school, despite the students’ mental ability to progress through the program. 10 The same criteria, by and large, applied to individuals who wanted to study in railway school cars. The policy was generally inclusive, as per its mandate to spread public education. In Ontario, the first correspondence course began in 1926, and by World War II, 2500 students were enrolled in the program. The Department of Education boasted that many graduates of the correspondence system were able to pass their high school examinations, and many did so in less time than students in the traditional program.11 Howard Ferguson, Ontario’s progressive conservative Premier, who also held the education minister’s portfolio, boasted about the program’s success: Country School Journal, Vol. 2 (2014) 27 The lessons returned are examined by well-qualified teachers in the employ of the Department, who find that the majority of those taking these lessons make just as good progress as they would in a well-conducted school. In fact, the general results have been successful beyond all expectations, and too much cannot be said in praise of the co-operation of the parents, and the perseverance of the children in carrying out this work, no doubt, in many cases, under very unfavorable circumstances.12 Railway School Cars When initiated in 1926, correspondence courses were viewed as having great promise for expanding educational opportunity. A creative Ontarian alternative—railway school cars—was also introduced that year.13 Whereas correspondence courses depended largely for success on the self-direction and self-motivation of learners, railroad school cars were believed to be more effective in meeting rural children’s needs. Unlike correspondence courses, they offered students an opportunity to cultivate relationships among themselves and with their teachers.14 Howard Ferguson’s discussion of the inception and introduction of the province’s “School Cars for Isolated People” depicts the program as an unmitigated success.15 The minister describes how these schools on wheels were outfitted with basic classroom, cooking, and sleeping accommodations for the teacher. They were moved along the transcontinental railway system by Canadian National Railway steam engines, stopping for short periods in small hamlets along the way. The teacher would provide direct instruction for several weeks before distributing assignments for students of varying ages and moving on to the next stop. On the return trip, the teacher would have the opportunity to evaluate students’ learning and provide further instruction. Ferguson even reported that “two boys, living far from the railway line, journeyed forty miles to the car, set up an old tent in mid- winter, thatched it with balsam boughs and lived in it while the car was near.” 16 Country School Journal, Vol. 2 (2014) 28 Aboriginal, Finnish, Norwegian, French, and British children in a school train at Nemigos, near Chapleau, Ontario. The picture (c. 1950) is a testament to the relatively diverse ethnic school population in Ontario’s rural North. Courtesy of the Canadian Film Board. The Annual Reports of the ministers of education are populated with stories highlighting the experiences of immigrant children with the railway cars. In 1928, the following anecdote was offered as an example: Joseph Ruffo, a little Italian, came to this country in spring; after only twelve weeks’ schooling in English he worked up to Second Grade. Settlements shift, old groups disappear, new ones arrive, but the School Car has proven its adaptability to this special work for which it was designed. Extension of the service to other needy areas is warranted. It should become a permanent institution.17 We do not hear the voices of children like Joseph Ruffo, who attended the railway car schools described in the government documents,

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